Stalking and shooting

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32554, 13 March 1971, Page 10

Stalking and shooting

Hunt the Far Mountain. By Keith Severlnsen. Reed. 182 pp. (Illustrated). The deerstalker’s enthusiasm is gratified by a tangible trophy, and Keith Severinsen has acquired nearly all the possible types of beasties’ heads or skins that New Zealand can provide. He describes graphically a great variety of shooting trips in a great variety of different country. He has shot deer, thar, chamois in the Forbes under d'Archiac, and hunted the elusive rusa deer in the Urewera (seven trips to secure one rusa trophy), sika in the centre of the North Island, wild merino rams in northern Hawke’s Bay (where he himself farms), and samba among the Foxton sandhills. He is inclined to regard samba, which he has shot in India but not in this country, as “New Zealand’s toughest trophy.” Superficially there is a certain monotony about these exploits. After we "had glassed the surrounding peaks with our binoculars,” it is only a few sentences before “The rifle spoke once and the boar pitched into the manuka,” or we “bowled the last wallaby” near Waimate. But the authenticity of the experiences is impressive. Also there is these accounts. The white-tail deer of much curious information embedded in Stewart Island, which never move more than 400 yards from the sea, “regularly wander the streets” at Halfmoon Bay and can be shot on the football ground. Then the book does rise to a crescendo. Hunting deer or wapiti in Fiordland is a tougher assignment than scouring North Island forests, at least the forest in the Sounds area happens to be attached to perpedicular granite cliffs, and the hunters could reach their wapiti block on George Sound only by water. , Deerstalkers will gain much from Mr Severinsen’s modestly-proferred advice. He gives numerous instances of poor shooting through failure to check rifles, which are often adversely affected by the bashing they receive scrambling through the bush or even driving in along bumpy logging tracks. Mountaineers might not applaud his food list, but then they cannot count on a supply of fresh meat—nor do they have to burden their homeward journeys with a frightful weight of antlers and skins, in addition to the already horrible pile of tent, rifle, ammunition, field glasses, and—in Mr Severinsen’s case—cameras, still and movie. Deerstalkers work hard for their trophies.